A wonderful woman in The Netherlands was telling me that she often doesn’t know the labels for flowers she grows or beautiful fish she encounters when diving. She doesn’t care what the”correct” labels are. What she cares about is describing their beauty, their brilliance, their color and texture. She cares about sharing the power of the experience as she feels it—without the labels.
How much better off might we be, if we chose to describe something or someone’s actions that we find particularly brilliant, touching, or beautiful with colorful and textured adjectives that recreate our experience for the listener rather than labels that summarize and name our experience? How much more generous and rich might our communication be if we stopped the shorthand of labeling? How much less judged might we feel, if we shared descriptions and painted pictures in the minds and hearts of others, rather than worrying about how we come across and whether we are choosing the “correct” names or labels for our experience?
The wisdom of returning to a Show— Don’t Tell approach, that writers use, is the return to the richness and texture of small moments that can enliven any interaction. We might be inclined to be more present in life, observe more clearly, and pay more attention to the smallest detail when we stop relying on labels. We might learn how to recreate the opportunity for another to appreciate both what we are describing AND the power of what it means to us, how it touched us.
Maybe it’s time to tear off the labels AND share the richness and beauty of what’s inside?
